


The Birth of a Monster

by TheLonelyCritic



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Gen, and Marisa makes him pay, in which asriel is a greater dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28484181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLonelyCritic/pseuds/TheLonelyCritic
Summary: He could see her now, a fallen angel illuminated with the fires of this inferno they’d found themselves in.////Asriel does the unthinkable and Marisa makes him pay for it. Inspired by a prompty post by chillin-in-my-bathtub on Tumblr.
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Lyra Belacqua, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 39





	1. A Matter of Urgency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorold confesses his greatest guilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else: Writing Maryisa/Marysa fics  
> Me: So what if Asriel was a greater dick?
> 
> Nonetheless here's a dark Masriel fic no one officially asked for whilst I effortlessly avoid the sequel fic I should be writing.  
> Enjoy????

**You took…**

**my Sun.**

**Under…**

**the Moon.**

**And left me…**

**Lonely.**

**-**

**Unloved Heart: Unloved**

* * *

They weren’t breathing. 

Marisa looked upon the scene with Father MacPhail by her side and an entourage of Magisterial soldiers behind. In front of the stairs that led to Asriel laboratory laid three bears. Dead. Each with a head shot that stained their fur and surrounding snow, that was disrupted with a stampede of paw prints, a scarlet red. It must have been a shotgun for all the bears had their faces exploded past recognition, not that anyone could ever truly tell them apart. Despite what the Iofur thought, the Panserbjorne weren’t human, they weren’t daemons. They were animals cursed with intelligent thought and look were such thoughts got them. Dead. 

Marisa crouched down in her oiled leather boots next to the bear lying nearest to her, fishing her gloved hands into the bullet wound. Two shot shells. 

“Why are their helmets removed?” MacPhail had finally found his voice, his face when they had first arrived washed with an uneasy sickness at the bloody sight. “Surely if they were in danger,” he continued, “they would have them on. I had thought their entire existence revolved around their armour.” 

No one replied. Just the quiet sound of icy exhales carried in the wind that seemingly reminded MacPhail that it wasn’t only Marisa here with him. He spun round to face the soldiers, “Do you need me to order you to do everything?” Through the wintry night MacPhail could make out their perplexed expressions. “The laboratory,” he said, gesturing to it. “Scope it. See if there’s anyone home.” Mindlessly, the soldiers did as they were told.

“They were waiting for someone. They had no idea they were in danger.” 

Marisa, who’d been lost in thought, finally removed her hand from the depths of the corpse's flesh and cleaned it in the snow.

“Who? Asriel?” MacPhail offered. 

She heaved herself up from her crouched position. “Unlikely. We should-”

“Drop the gun!”

The shout erupted from the laboratory and was followed by others with similar wordings. MacPhail and Marisa followed Ozymandias’ lead as he bounded up one flight of stairs into the laboratory and another flight onto the top deck. There the soldiers surrounded a seated figure, their identity obscured by the uniformed bodies that surrounded them. Marisa slid through the figures to get a better view only to see it was…

“Thorold.”

The aged man raised his head, a gloomy gaze meeting hers. He looked so defeated, a weak, non-threatening hand rested on the trigger of the shotgun propped on his lap. His pinscher daemon was equally dejected, not even bothering to acknowledge the golden monkey that had approached her. 

“MacPhail,” Marisa began, “tell these men to lower their guns.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” 

Amusing, the man that didn’t know arse from his elbow was questioning her. 

“You needn’t worry, Father,” Marisa said as she neared Thorold, leaning in to catch his gaze again which had wandered off to the wooden floorboard. “Thorold isn’t going to do anything foolish. Isn’t that right, Thorold?”

The man merely sighed and visibly removed his hand from the trigger. She could hear the soldiers lower their guns at that. With closer proximity, Marisa could see the angry bruise that had formed at Thorold’s temple, clotted cuts stemming whatever blood had escaped when the wound was first dealt. She reached her previously blood-drenched glove to touch the bruise and Thorold must have smelt it because he jerked violently to the side, startling the soldiers into action again as they poised their guns. She twisted round to glare at them, the look finally settling on MacPhail.

“Could you give us a moment please?” she asked calmly.

The soldiers didn’t even wait for MacPhail to respond, noting her order packaged in an unsuspecting request and carried it out, filing one by one down the metal stairs. Her gaze still rested on MacPhail. It took him a moment but he finally got the message.

“I’ll go check if there’s word from any of the other zeppelins on Asriel’s whereabouts,” he said in a manner of explaining what was obviously not him being terrified by the death-like stare Marisa casted his way. And he too disappeared down the metal stairs, leaving Thorold and she. Another pair of rhythmic breaths reminded her that, yes, their daemons were here too.

She turned back to Asriel’s, presumably, ex-manservant. His hopeless expression seemed more complicated on second glance, like there were layers to the pain he was feeling and equal amounts of layers to the things he longed to get off his chest. With time being of the essence, Marisa didn’t desire to waste any of it soothing the truth out of this broken man. She’d rip all layers at once and leave him as raw as if it’d just happened.

“Asriel.” The name caught his attention and like turning on fairy lights, memories started to illuminate in his mind. But these memories must have been lit red because they only caused a darkening of his features.

“Asriel,” Thorold repeated, taking a deep, useless pause that only squandered further precious seconds. “He tricked us.”

Her reply was lightning quick. “Us? How?”

“He informed me the bears wouldn’t let them leave. But that leaving was of urgency and that we didn’t have time to negotiate with the Panserbjorne. That we must do what we must.”

“So you shot them?”

A pause. “Yes.” Another pause. “But he shot first,” Thorold added as if to negate the murders that had been committed at his hands, “I had to wait until he’d killed the one who mattered most. The king. He did it there,” Thorold briefly pointed to a window behind Marisa. “He used the vantage point and the darkness of the night to his advantage and knowing that their helmets had been removed, he aimed for the head and shot. I then followed suit from an adjacent window. Another two dead. The bears were in a panicked fury, wanting to enter but their bodies being too large. I remember him shouting something on the lines of ‘You have no king now! And, now, you have no business here! Begone or I’ll kill you all!’ The bears hesitated but with one warning shot they fled.” 

Marisa observed that Thorold seemed lost in the memory, relieving the moment just as she had expected. She didn’t foresee, however, how the despair on his face would hurt her so. She would be delicate this time.

“You said leaving was a matter of urgency, why was that?”

“You service a man…” oh no, “...for years…” this was guilt talk, “...over a decade…” and guilt talk was a long-winded mess of thoughts and regrets. But it was too late, she had invited it after all. “You think you know the man you service,” Thorold continued, “that there’s an understanding, limits. And yet I could not have predicted what Asriel would do. What lengths he would go to. It’s my fault-”

The snap of gloved fingers startled Thorold out of his incoming self-loathing. His eyes settled from their alert look to something warmer, it hadn’t been her intention but it seemed he appreciated the gesture. A little less delicacy this time, though.

“A matter of urgency?”

He let out a shuddering sigh. “Yes. A portal to another world. He’d received the last thing he needed for it some hours ago. But it wasn’t in the form we were expecting so I thought nothing of it until he instructed I was to stay. Then I understood and I tried to object but as you can see that didn’t go so well. When I aroused, they were already gone.”

“They?” Marisa questioned with a slight tilt of her head. Thorold had now begun to avoid her gaze, focusing on the black hairs of his daemon that stood erect. 

“It’s what he’d been waiting for.” He hesitated. “A child.”

“And this child?” Marisa leaned in and tried to catch Thorold’s eyes again but they darted to the other side. “Where did this child come from?”

“The bears brought her.”

“Who is she, Thorold?”

He’d begun to mutter incoherently, accompanied by the quiet yapping of his daemon. “He told me you’d come eventually. He told me not to say a word. For all these years of loyalty only to be betrayed when it mattered most-”

“Thorold. The name.” Her voice was frosty and commanding, any previous considerations for his sentimentalities gone. It seemed to have worsened his state. Were those tears in his eyes?

“When, when she had seen what he’d done - no - what we’d done, she was distraught. Her tears wouldn’t stop and it was only then that I realised -”

She grabbed his head by his chin and forced him to face her dead-straight. He looked up and there were tears bubbling in her glowering blue eyes. 

“Her name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On evaluation, I think Thorold would have just cut to the chase and told Marisa what Asriel was about to do and who with from the get go. But that doesn’t make for good, tense writing now does it?
> 
> Also, I’m not sure what’s up with Roger in this alternate version. Maybe he died at Bolvangar. I’m not sure. But anyway this is a three parter so one down, two more to go.


	2. Dead Man Walking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marisa finds what's left of her heart.

**You took…**

**my stars.**

**They paled…**

**to grey.**

**Under…**

**the moon.**

**Left me…**

**longing.**

**Left me…**

**unloved.**

**-**

**Unloved Heart: Unloved**

* * *

MacPhail looked up as Marisa emerged from the laboratory, Thorold’s shotgun in hand.

“We’re leaving,” she commanded as she descended down the last metal steps, not even bothering to look his way.

He cleared his throat. “What did he say?”

She carried on walking in the direction of the zeppelin that was hovering twenty or so metres away from where they were. She was nearing it with uncanny rapidity, her oiled boots kicking the snow left and right as the golden monkey scampered ahead. “Better yet,” she shouted, still not turning to face him, “I’m leaving.”

“Mrs Coulter-” he started but stopped as he saw her board the ship deck and whisper something to the lieutenant commander. He then shouted something into the body of the airship and seconds later the zeppelin was rising into the sky. To say Father MacPhail was shocked would be an understatement.

Just what did that man tell her?

* * *

Thorold watched as what had been a tearful look contorted into rage that Marisa was very much on the edge of unleashing, the furious blinking of her lids clearing her vision as her gaze settled on him. He gulped.

“You let him take her?”

Her voice rose and fell but it was evident control was withering away with the twitching of her cheek, the clenching and unclenching of her hands that longed to be wrapped around his throat. He’d thought Asriel was the one to be feared. He’d been direly wrong.

“As I said before,” Thorold started, “I tried to stop-”

Marisa lunged for the shotgun that still rested on his lap, her right hand curling around the receiver but Thorold had been on edge all this while and almost instantaneously his right hand grabbed the barrel before she could pull it away. She tugged at it. He refused to budge. 

“Give me the gun.”

“I don’t think it wise-”

“Give me the gun, Thorold!” Marisa pulled again but this time his opposing jerk had been too forceful causing her thumb, slippery with the leather of her glove, to accidentally squeeze the trigger. A shot rang in the air. A heart beat passed. They were both still here. But upon turning to his side to see where the bullet had gone, Thorold noticed their daemons were now a metre apart, a hole torn through the wooden floorboard they’d been standing on mere seconds ago. He sighed and released the gun. 

“The mountain peak.” He said, facing her once again. “There’s a machine there and it’s where Asriel is headed.”

* * *

The wind howled about her as she leaned against the railing of the Zeppelin deck. Marisa had refused the lieutenant commander’s request for her to join him inside, having no desire to spend a moment longer than necessary on the ship. The same ship that moved so achingly slow, the mountain peak appearing the same distance away as it had been minutes before. It was as if The Authority was taunting her, making her see where she longed - no - needed to be and experience every passing breath longer it took to get there. Each breath she wasted being exchanged for one last breath Lyra desperately needed. 

She felt a stiff presence behind her.

“Ma’am.”

The useless lieutenant commander of this useless ship.

“Can this zeppelin go any faster?” she grumbled, refusing to turn to him, her eyes transfixed instead on the summit ahead.

“No, ma’am. This is as fast as she goes. But at this speed we should be at the summit in T minus 9 min-”

He froze. Just as she froze. Just as time froze.

A vibrant beam of energy flared into the night sky casting its unnatural, almost blinding, light in all directions. It created ribbons, mirroring the beauty of aurora and it shone there for the second it had stretched beyond imaginable lengths. Then it converged on itself, the energy returning to the summit in a concentrated form and the clock of time started to tick again.

Something akin to a wail escaped her.

* * *

The gun fell with her as her legs gave way and her body sunk into the snow. It was unbearable, a convulsing pain that made her arms and hands shake relentlessly as she dragged herself in the snow, heaving all limbs that now felt numb as she reached the cage the golden monkey had opened. She tore her gloves off and reached her hand in, ghosting over a soft cheek that held a polar chill.

“Oh, God, no.”

She pulled her out.

“Please, no.”

Wrapped her arms around the small body that was donning a fur coat that was so similar to her own. 

“Please, Lyra, no. Don’t leave me. Please, Lyra, I can’t -'' whatever silent tears she’d been shedding now cracked through her as an ugly sob. And it was continuous. One choking sob after another, each stealing the air from her lungs so that between each she gasped for air only for its frigid nature to freeze her chest, making the effort of breathing all the more painful. “Please, Lyra, don’t go. Don’t leave me. Come back to me. Return to me, sweet one.” She began rocking the child in her arms, unconsciously wishing the movement would imbue life into the soulless corpse and cease this ungodly grief. It didn’t. 

“You’re my life, Lyra. You’re my entire reason for living and I’m sorry-” another choking sob. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I never listened. I’m sorry … but I’m here now.” She laid a thousand kisses on her cold temple. “I’m here now. So come back to me, darling. Lyra, please, I beg of you come back t- DON’T TOUCH HER!”

The tentative hand that had reached for Lyra’s hair recoiled in an instant. Marisa’s wet face blazed at Ozymandias who’d been quietly whimpering, his forlorn features that reflected her own doing nothing to quell this insatiable grief, regret and, now, rage that roared within her. That ravaged what little was left of her heart and scattered the strewn pieces in places she had no intent in finding. 

“She was mine. She was mine. She was mine.” The three words became a repeating chant that garnered more and more anger out of that cesspit that had always dwelled within her but now overflowed with her night soil of bitterness until she was screaming the words at her daemon causing him to cower back in fear, finally stopping once he’d reached the shotgun that laid a couple of metres away from her.

“Lyra was mine and that, that sick fuck took her from me. And he thinks he can run, escape, hide?”

A black-hearted laugh erupted from her and shook Ozymandias with the twisted form it took. A concoction of a remaining sob, bestial rage and a sinful desire to kill.

“Pass me the gun.”

_Asriel._

_You're a dead man walking._


	3. Inhumanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And madness ensues...

**Feel the fury closing in.**

**All resistance wearing thin.**

**Nowhere to run from all of this havoc.**

**Nowhere to hide from all of this madness,**

**madness,**

**madness ...**

**-**

**Madness: Ruelle**

* * *

Surely, they’d been wading through the forest for hours now. The tropical humidity and the heavy downpour from the strange storm above forced Marisa to neglect her fur coat, which was sodden with water and dirty with mud, a distance ago. The path, that never truly existed, was slippery and tangled with overgrown tree roots and made frightening by the animal noises that screeched from within the darkness that surrounded them. But Marisa was unfazed, using the barrel of the shotgun to knock branches out her way with one hand as the other gripped her pistol. So Ozymandias had no option but to brave the strange terrains they’d found themselves in after they had passed through the hole in their world into this new one. 

What felt like an eternity later they found themselves by a bridge that crossed a large expanse of water to the source of light that had guided them from the top of the forest to its base. Although, it was only now that they saw what it was. A town on the other side was lit with flames that engulfed houses and blazed through streets forcing the residents to seek escape the same way they wished to enter. Tens of them, all daemonless, running across the bridge with little on them except their desire and will to see another day. She calmly brushed past them, zoning out their unintelligible cries as she neared the town until it became impossible to do so, the cries of infants all the way to the elderly engulfing the air but yet failing to hide a quieter, cricket-like sound. If this was any other day, Marisa may have cared to know what was at the root of all this havoc that left children at street ends clutching one another as they screamed for their parents. Alas, on this very ungodly night she had a debt settle and could care less about anything else. 

Ozymandias, however, was less sure of the new environment, noting that the sky had failed to change colour since they’d arrived in this new world, the only light coming from the fires that licked at stone walls and wooden roofs. This orange light added to the hellish atmosphere that only grew in its intensity as they twisted down more interconnecting paths, taking mind to avoid the bodies that laid on the floor, pale of life and all things human. They had no idea where they were going, the golden monkey was sure of it, despite the purposeful steps Marisa took, they were utterly clueless as to where Asriel could be. He paused at the open door of a house in the middle of a three arm junction, letting out an audible grumble which caught Marisa’s attention. She twisted round to face him, a scowl distorting her fine features.

“What?”

His gaze moved to watch a young woman as she emerged from the street at his side, her eyes hollowed of all awareness and her body seemingly swaying without aim. Latched to both her arms were two small boys who were blubbering their hearts out as they tried to gain their mother’s attention. She didn’t respond. Marisa and her daemon were silent for the minute it took for the trio to cross pass them, the monkey sickened by the intrigue splayed across Marisa’s face. But she quickly schooled her curiosity, her eyes dropping back to him.

“What?” she asked again, “Are you afraid?”

The look he gave seemed to question how she could not be.

Marisa sighed. “Nothing here can harm us. Nothing anywhere can ever harm us. Not now. You want to know why?” She punctuated the question with the slight rise of the shotgun, clutched in her right hand, to point it at him. He took a tentative step backwards.

“Because the maximum pain has been dealt. There’s no more hurt, no more grief, no more pain. There’s nothing left to feel so there is nothing left to fear. There’s just a dark, all-encompassing void. Do you understand that, _Ozymandias_?” 

Whilst she’d spoke he’d continued to retreat until he was now at the open doorpost, staring ahead of her. He must have seen it first but she could now hear it. That cricket-like sound from before. But it was stronger this time, more alive and groaning with some deep hunger as she felt it (whatever it was) approach her from behind. She turned to face the entity, still keeping her shotgun trained on her daemon in effort to quell what remnants of apprehensions he still held.

She saw the amorphous soul eater in the light of the fiery city as it grew closer.

_There was nothing to feel._

Its form swirling, pulsating, less than a metre away now.

_There was nothing to fear._

Its groans crying out to her...

_But one thing should be feared._

...bewitched by her stillness that was contrary to the familiar pleas for mercy at their hands. The desire for life. The desire for the maintenance of humanity.

_And that was..._

It recoiled fiercely, exacting distance between itself and whatever was before it. When it finally decided to resume its course, the entity began to curve around her frame as if magnetically repulsed by the inhumanity that radiated off her, the effort of avoidance causing it to split in two and the pair of them, once completing the careful crescent around her, dived into the open door behind Ozymandias. She twisted around to watch them latch onto a couple who’d been hiding under a table, the shapeless masses consuming them until limp bodies fell from their dark embrace. Marisa’s focus dropped down to her daemon.

“You see…,” she started, marvelment laced in her voice, “salvation is through strength alone. Your fear will only condemn us.” She finally lowered the shotgun. “So unless you’re willing to cooperate, you can stay here and I’ll finish this on my own.”

Ozymandias slumped onto his hind legs, seemingly content to stay here than watch her destroy his other half. But at the sound of the now twin entities that drifted out of the house, the golden hairs of the monkey stood erect as he realised there was little option in the matter. His safety could only be assured if he stayed with her so he’d have to follow, no matter how reluctant he was. The black masses ignored him and approached Marisa, both by her sides as they awaited her next move. A dark chuckle escaped her. They were at her service. 

“There’s a man. He’s unlike the people here, being a part of two but the pair of them are also one. Can you find him?”

The cricket-like sound of communication ensued from the pair and suddenly grew into a guttural screech, one that was responded to by similar grating sounds from all directions. The dark bodies then started to move down the path, Marisa and her daemon following not so far behind. And down winding paths they went, the speed of the entities growing the closer they got to their target that soon Marisa and Ozymandias were running to keep up, dancing around the roaring flames, brain-dead adults and tearful children until they found themselves at the end of the path.

There he was.

Asriel and Stelmaria trapped in front of the tower that was at the heart of this city as black bodies blocked each and every path which emerged from the city square and from the centre path proceeded a pair they’d least expected. 

“Marisa,” Asriel began, “allow me to explain-”

Two shot shells tore through his abdomen, the force of the impact throwing him onto the ground. He heard the golden monkey howl as he scurried to Stelmaria’s fallen form. The sight must have been horrible because the monkey would not stop whimpering despite his daemon’s raspy attempts to placate the primate. Then dread set in as he heard the heavy sound of heeled oiled boots as they approached him, eternal condemnation encroaching with every step. She kicked his legs apart and walked between them, now mounting his chest so that her feet squelched in the flesh of his ravaged torso.

He could see her now, a fallen angel illuminated with the fires of this inferno they’d found themselves in. She observed the pistol in her left hand and deciding it was too meagre she tossed it away, now uncocking and reloading the shotgun.

“There’s nothing to explain, Asriel.” Her voice encompassed a blasphemous beauty, seemingly all too soft for it to be the last sound he would hear. “There’s nothing you can say. And even if you could think up some twisted words of justification, I don’t want to hear them. No.” She snapped the shotgun close and tortured him as she made him watch it slowly descend to his temple, a devilish smirk snaking across her cheeks that were flushed with madness. “All I want is to see you die. Grant me that, Asriel. Die for me.”

She squeezed the trigger once again, blood spraying across her face. The golden monkey let out one last distraught howl as the embrace he’d shared with Stelmaria disappeared into a puff of Dust. He turned to glare at Marisa and saw her blood-stained, grinning and positively mad, having discarded the shotgun and exchanged it for her pistol.

“Well then…”

She pointed the gun at him.

He screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate it when villains are given time to explain themselves. If it were me, double tap and done.
> 
> Ending is up for interpretation, do you think Marisa would have killed herself or lived on as a monster? (honestly I feel like at this point Marisa is so out of it and disconnected from her soul, that if she shot it she wouldn’t die but probably be liberated from her humanity and become a true monster. Great, … now I’ve scared myself.)
> 
> Current votes:  
> Marisa dies - 5. Marisa stays a monster - 0.


End file.
